This little dialogue from The Truth by Terry Pratchett could directly be applied to me:

‘You talking to me about knocking back? Don’t know what a tosheroon is, do you?’ he said. The dwarf shrugged.
  ‘Yes, I do,’ said William. ‘There’s several meanings, but I think you’re referring to a big caked ball of mud and coins, such as you might find in some crevice in an old drain where the water forms an eddy. They can be quite valuable.’
  ‘What? You’ve got hands on you like a girl,’ said Harry, so surprised that the cigar momentarily drooped. ‘How come you know that?’
  ‘I like words, Mr King.’

- p.212, 2001 Corgi Edition.

It may or may not also be this single little conversation that has made William de Worde one of my favourite Pratchett characters.

But without going into a digression about how I love collecting words and being an obnoxious little know-it-all, let’s just say that I also find words quite funny. However, before the funny, I first have a couple of other things things to say.

Firstly, sorry for being MIA. University started again a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been spinning around like a crazy elf. (Kudos if you pick up the reference!) Everybody seems to think it is my goal in life to read a score of boring articles a week. Well, maybe not a score. But a lot. I was going to make a vlog again, but halfway through recording I noticed that the mic was not picking up my voice properly and I was basically inaudible. I didn’t feel like dubbing it, so you will just have to make do with my bland text.

I’m not sure what this means for the blog and how often I will have time to post. Perhaps I will start doing smaller posts, with only one or two frames. But I am definitely going to continue blogging! Unfortunately I am enjoying this far too much to stop! Anyway, just be aware of this in case I go missing for 3 weeks!
Oh, and before someone asks, our academic year does run along with the calendar year.

Secondly, I… uh… received quite a lot of awards recently. Uh… 5, I think. I will make my next post about that, but firstly I need your help! Everyone seems to want you to tell your readers random things about you. However, I’m fresh out of ideas. I don’t even know where to start this time round. So if any of you have any random questions that you would like me to answer, let me know in the comments and I’ll include it! If I receive too many, I’ll just pick some.
Also, if anyone has any suggestions for blogs that I can pass these things on to, let me know as well! I wouldn’t complain as I never seem to be able to think of the required amount of new nominees.

See? Working together we can get there! To the stars!

Thirdly, enjoy my

Taking Words Literally!

There are words that are so common we all know them and use them everyday. But have you ever noticed that some words can have very strange meanings if you look at them literally? No? Observe:

Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate every random person who happens to own a tablet computer. I just hate the show-offs, and believe me, there are enough of those in my classes. So right, you are able to afford one of these ludicrous new note-typing machines. That still does not give you the right to look down at the rest of us who cope perfectly well with a pen and paper and to come in late to class, wait until all eyes are on you, take out your shiny tablet and start to preen it. *

* Well, maybe I’m just a tiny bit jealous. Jealous of those who don’t need to lug heavy handbooks around, because they simply scan them onto the tablet. But I am certainly not jealous of having to look after a liability like that all day and be nervous that it will get stolen – with all my notes and books on it. I’m paranoid enough about my phone already, thank you all the same.

Sorry, but I just could not resist sticking a random, old-fashioned London dandy into this cartoon. I don’t know how these ideas get into my head, or what exactly he is doing there.

PS.

I hope everyone enjoyed this!

First things first:

I wrote up two tutorials on Valentine’s Origami. Just click on the pictures to be taken to the tutorials! =]

And then…

The Umbrella Chronicles

It happened this week. Well, actually it happens so often that they can start using me as a form of weather prediction. It will rain on the day that Elana leaves her umbrella at home! Yes, I got caught outside without my umbrella, and obviously I was very far from a building. By the time that I had run into one, I was more or less soaked. But the thing is, you see, I almost always have my umbrella on me when I go out for the day. Winter and summer. When it doesn’t rain, I use it to walk under if I go in the sun, because I’m trying to avoid getting tanned. But then sometimes… it looks like rain the entire week, but it does not rain… until this happens:

Yeah…

I hope everyone has a great week and that you won’t be caught without your weather-protective gear!

I just quickly wanted to share with you that I wrote up a new origami tutorial earlier today. You can go view it over at my origami blog: How to Fold a Simple Origami Box. Just click on the picture to be taken straight to it!

Go learn how to fold one and then use it as a gift box for your special someone on Valentine’s Day! Go on! You know you want to…

Also in that post, I show off my own smallest origami crane, after being challenged by a commenter in relation to my previous tutorial. It’s small enough to sit on my fingertip!

Oh, by the way, before I sign off, I received one of the funniest spam comments that I’ve seen to date recently. Some of these things are funny simply because of the odd language they sometimes use, but this one was funny because of the irony. Placed only to promote its link:

I was curious if you ever considered changing the structure of your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 pictures. Maybe you could space it out better?

The post that this was left on? The Idiocy of the English Language, which you have all probably read by now, you know, Freshly Pressed and all that. I found it hilarious because of the unintentional irony – that post basically consists of pictures! I’m counting 8 pictures and about 3 paragraphs’ worth of text.

Someone should really teach these bots to place their spam in places where it will be less ironic… Now, if this comment had appeared on my last post about writing and music, I might even have taken it seriously…

Still laughing,

This post was inspired by something that I read over on Bethie’s HASH. She is busy with a writing challenge on different questions (Check it out, it’s really interesting if you are a writer!). The one that matters now was the one about writing and music with the question:

Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

I was obviously all hugely excited by this post and eventually Bethie convinced me to make one too. So now I’m doing it. And probably blaming it on her as well.

(This is going to be long.)

Certainly I listen to music whilst I write. What would I be without the music I write to? That was a tad overdramatic perhaps, but it makes my point. I need music whilst I write – it is very seldom that I would write in silence.

I am also not the only one who feels this way, and neither am I the only one that begins to hear stories in music. One of my favourite authors, Diana Wynne Jones, said,

The Magicians of Caprona was odder than most, because I heard a piece of music and thought, ‘That ought to have words,’ and the story came into my head as I thought it.

I tend to pick what I listen to by need and theme, rather than any other reason. And I’ll admit it: I don’t like conventional, modern music. There will be the occasional pop song that I like and also the occasional rock number. But in general, I don’t like having to listen to those things. What I do like, is soundtracks. I’m crazy about the things actually. I believe that soundtrack-music plays such a large role in any theatre experience (it builds everything from emotion to tension) that it should get more recognition than it does. The only part of the Academy Awards that I am really interested in is the Oscar for Best Soundtrack. I remember being furious at the judges’ choice last year.

Thus, this means that the title of this post has a double meaning: not only does the music serve as a soundtrack to my writing, the music is also a soundtrack in its own right. And yes, before someone points this out to me in the comments, I do know that the correct term for the music to a film is “score”. I just don’t like that word. It’s not descriptive.

Though soundtracks do make up the majority of what I listen to at any time, not just when I’m writing, I do listen to other things as well. I like a bit of instrumental metal sometimes and also some folk (don’t judge). Also, I like to listen to trailer music, which is even more of a niche market than soundtracks. It is similar to soundtracks in that it is used in films (mostly only their trailers, hence the name) and commercials to create a mood, but different that they do not come in a series that, as a whole, tell an entire story. Trailer music is like a snippet out of a bigger story and I like it, because I can fill in the rest with my writing.

I listen a lot to the Lord of the Rings soundtracks (my favourite), How to Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter (especially the final soundtrack), the Tangled soundtrack and The Three Musketeers soundtrack.

Now… on to the specifics!

*

The first time that I actually started connecting certain tracks with writing and actually made a point of noticing that I did this, was during the first time that I did NaNoWriMo. That was when I set myself the challenge to do it at another time of year, because I could not make it in November: thus June/July 2010. The novel that I wrote during this time (and still have not finished) was dramatic, overly dramatic, satirical and verbose. I’ll tell you more about it someday, when it makes more sense to me.

Anyway, it was also during this time that I found an album by Two Steps From Hell, a production company that specializes in trailer music, Illumina. Then I went on and listened to it a lot.

Therefore there will always be a couple Illumina tracks that I will forever associate with writing:

Could’ve been…

I love you forever

The good news is… that that was not all that I listened to. There was one certain track that I used to write a death scene. What was it? Oh yes:

Remember When… This one is by Future World Music, another trailer music company. Future World Music actually became quite important to me during this time of my writing, because their track Dreamscapes and Wishes actually became the theme song to my novel.

But enough about this novel. There are quite a few more tracks that I associate with it, most notably Believe and Ashes of War, but let’s move on.

*

During one of my other novelling adventures, which I named Arcana for the lack of better ideas, I never realised how much I based the ending of my story off one of the songs that I listen to so much: Send Me a Song, by Celtic Woman. I believe it is sung by Lisa Kelly.

Without telling you the entire plot (which I still have not written the middle of), it was roughly a story about music and the awkward relationship between a girl and her boy friend (emphatically two words). There was lots of music and he broke the law. For which he was banished. So yes, if you listen to the lyrics of that song, you’ll hear another story very much like it. I only realised what I did much later!

*

My latest escapade into the world of music and writing was, of course, during NaNoWriMo 2011. This was certainly the story that was most influenced by music, of any of those that I had written. You see, I got my idea for the plot when listening to Now and Then by Blackmore’s Night. When I heard the lyrics, especially the bit that said “I’ll heal in time”, I knew I was going to write a cross between historical novel and science fiction, telling the story of a girl going time-travelling to make sense of the death of her husband. Snapshots of Time was born.

Whilst I was writing this novel, I listened to whatever was on hand and had a fast beat. I would do anything that could make me type faster, because I only had an hour each day to write, and I was trying to do 1,800 words every time. It was a challenge. I went through quite a lot of the Harry Potter soundtracks in that time. It kept me going. I have the complete collection, 1-8. I listened obsessively to Weasley Stomp, because it was the fastest track from it that I could find.

When things were a little calmer in NaNo land, I turned to Tuck Everlasting. I have never even watched this show, but the soundtrack reminds me of open fields and buttercups. Why buttercups I don’t know, because I’ve only ever seen a few in my life. I wouldn’t know why I have an association with the things!

When my novel turned sadder, I also had my go-to tracks. Schindler’s List of course remains one of the ultimate tracks, and then there were also things like Hymn to the Fallen, out of Saving Private Ryan.

I should really stop now with this post. It has gotten completely out of control! I won’t even get started on favourite composers!

I hope everyone who read this far enjoyed it in its pictureless-state. You’d better. You’ve no idea how long it took me to write this thing!

Anyway, seeing that people seem to like library cartoons so much, I feel fully justified in doing some more. I present to you… *can I have a drumroll, please*

I did sleep quite a lot in the library last year, and not enough in my bed. Those of you who have been around for a while will know that the library is basically my hang-out. I hide from social situations in there.

I listen to my iPod in the library whilst I work. But then, especially if a catchy song plays, I sometimes start bouncing in my seat and mouthing the words along. The looks I get for that are really embarrassing.

You know those silences that can suddenly fall in a crowded room that was buzzing only a moment before? Yes, those…

Our library has really, really narrow spaces between the shelves. That the books often overhang their shelves do not help matters either. They are quite discriminatory those shelves, really. I’m short, mostly petite and thinner than most. And I sometimes have trouble turning round with a bag on my back. So I don’t know what people bigger than me do. On top of that, stuff like this is always happening:

Yes, then someone with a book-trolley will come down the row where you are standing. And there is only space for one at a time. One of you is going to have to back off. Sometimes it will result in a staring match. But someone will have to reverse in the end. Usually it will be me. Librarians do not take nonsense from books or students.

I hope you all enjoyed that! At the moment I’m working on a tutorial on how to fold an origami box. I will announce it here when I am done with it. Also, before I forget, if there are still any procrastinators that still want to download my 2012 calendar over there in the sidebar –> do it now. I’m going to remove the download box within the next few days (as soon as I stop procrastinating).

Hope everybody has a lovely weekend!